A group of Microsoft employees urged the company... [to] forgo bidding on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract, a $10 billion project in which Microsoft would provide cloud computing services to the Department of Defense... "“When we decided to work at Microsoft, we were doing so in the hopes of ‘empowering every person on the planet to achieve more,’ not with the intent of ending lives and enhancing lethality,” the employees wrote. For those who say that another company will simply pick up JEDI where Microsoft leaves it, we would ask workers at that company to do the same... A race to the bottom is not an ethical position."... The employees also criticized Microsoft’s lack of transparency in the matter, saying that unclear conditions pertaining to the contract make it hard for employees to understand the potentially negative effects of the code they write... When asked for comment a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company had “submitted its bid on the JEDI contract on the October 12 deadline." "While we don’t have a way to verify the authenticity of this letter, we always encourage employees to share their views with us,” the spokesperson said... The employees referenced a similar effort by thousands of workers at Google who organized against their company also pursuing the JEDI contract, on the grounds of preserving human rights. Google executives ultimately capitulated to their workers' demands and pulled out from the contract.